by Qiu Xiaolong
There had been only one woman in Yu’s life—Peiqin. But Yu was a happy man because of it.
Was there a woman in Chief Inspector Chen’s life? There had been one—according to Jiang—in Beijing, years earlier. Yu had never heard anything about it, but it was said that of late there was a female often seen in Chen’s company. According to the bureau housing committee, however, there was no one. Otherwise Chen would surely have tried to make a point of it when applying for an apartment.
Even Jiang seemed to have a soft spot for the chief inspector. At least she changed her attitude abruptly because of his note. The fact that Chen had recognized her in the picture also intrigued him. Nothing but her bare back showed in that photograph. Was it the black mole on the nape of her neck that had revealed her identity to him?
Could there be something between the two? Immediately Yu hoped he was wrong. He had come to think of Chen as a friend. It was time for Chen to settle down, but not with somebody as modern as Jiang.
Chapter 24
It was Chief Inspector Chen’s fifth day in Guangzhou. He had awakened to find a note on the nightstand. It was just an address with a short line underneath it.
Xie Rong. 60 Xinhe Road, #543.
You will find her there. Have a wonderful day.
Ouyang
Xinhe Road was not one of the main streets. Walking past a run-down Turkish bathhouse with a pasty-faced girl in the doorway and a pretentious coffee shop with several computers on the glass-topped tables beside a sign saying “Electronic Mails,” Chief Inspector Chen reached a tall building at the address given him.
Old and dilapidated, the building was neither an office building, nor was it residential. Yet, there was a doorman sitting there, sorting mail at the entrance desk. He stared up at Chen over his reading glasses. When Chen showed him the address, the doorman pointed at the elevator.
Chen waited for about ten minutes without seeing any sign of the elevator coming down. He was about to climb the stairs when the elevator arrived with a thud. It appeared even more ancient than the building itself, but it carried him to the fifth floor and bobbed to a stop.
As he stepped through the squeaking door, he had a weird feeling of stepping into an old movie from the thirties. Song Girl—he recalled its name. There was a narrow corridor, smelling of dead cigars, lined with a number of suspiciously closed doors, as if General Yan of the movie, still wrapped in scarlet silk pajamas, would pop out of a door in the next minute to take a bouquet of roses from a flower girl. The flower girl had been played by Zhou Xuan, so breathtaking in those days.
Chief Inspector Chen knocked at the door marked 543.
“Who is it?” a young girl’s voice called out.
“Chen Cao, Mr. Ouyang’s friend.”
“Come on in. The door is not locked.”
Pushing the door open, he found himself in a room with a half drawn velvet curtain. The room contained little in the way of furni- ture: a double bed, a large mirror on the wall just above the headboard, a towel-covered sofa, a nightstand, and a couple of chairs.
Propped up on cushions, a young girl was reclining on the sofa, reading a paperback. She wore a blue-striped bathrobe that showed most of her thighs; her bare feet dangled over the sofa arm. On the coffee table was a crystal ashtray with lipstick-marked cigarette butts.
“So you are Chen Cao.”
“Yes, has Ouyang told you about me?”
“Sure, you’re special, he’s told me, but it’s a bit early for me, I am afraid,” she said, moving to a sitting position. “My name is Xie Rong.” She got to her feet, not embarrassed as she straightened her robe.
“I should have called first, but—”
“That’s okay,” she said. “A distinguished customer is always welcome.”
“I don’t know what Ouyang has told you, but let’s have a talk.”
“Take a seat.” She gestured toward the chair beside the bed. He hesitated before sitting. The room smelled of strong spirits, cigarette smoke, cheap cosmetics, and something faintly suggestive of body odor.
Walking barefoot across the carpet, she poured some coffee from an electronic coffee pot, and handed him a cup on a Fuzhou lacquered tray.
“Thanks,” he said. Chief Inspector Chen was in for something he had not expected, or not even imagined, he realized. Maybe that was why Ouyang had left the address with no explanation. A poet searching for a young girl in a large city could have appeared suspiciously “romantic”—enough for Ouyang to bring him and the girl together in a flight of best-seller fantasy. There was no use blaming Ouyang, who had meant well.
“So let’s get on with it.” She climbed onto the bed, sitting there, her arms folded across her knees, studying him intensely, in a posture rather suggestive of a Burmese cat. It was not a repulsive association. In a way, she reminded him of someone.
“A first-timer, eh?” she said, misreading his silence.”Don’t be nervous.”
“No, I’ve come here to—”
“What about something to relax you first? A Japanese massage— a foot massage—to start with?”
“A foot massage—” he echoed. A foot massage. He had read about it in a Japanese novel. One of Mishima’s, perhaps. Something of an existentialist experience, though he had never liked Mishima. But it was a temptation. He would probably never come here again. Whether he was stepping over the line he had drawn for himself, he did not know. It was too late, however, for him to back out—unless he flashed his I.D. and started questioning her as a chief inspector. But would that work? To Xie Rong, as well as to other ordinary Chinese people, HCC like Wu Xiaoming led an existence far above them, and above the law, too. So it was quite likely she would not dare to say anything against Wu. If she refused to answer his questions, Chief Inspector Chen could not do much in Guangzhou. One thing he had learned in the past few days was the unreliability of his local colleagues.
“Why not?” he said, flashing a few bills.
“What a generous tip! Put it on the nightstand. Let’s go to the bathroom.”
“No.” He was still trying to draw a line somewhere. “I’ll take the shower by myself.”
“As you please,” she said casually. “You’re so different.”
She scrambled down, knelt at his feet, and began to unlace his shoes.
“No,” he protested again in embarrassment.
“You have to take your shoes off—that’s only civil.”
Before he could say or do anything, she reached out to unbutton his shirt. Feeling the heat of her breath on his shoulder, he took a step back. She then took a bathrobe from behind the door and threw it to him. He hurried into the bathroom, still wearing his clothes, the robe draped over his shoulder, thinking to himself that he must resemble some character in a movie.
The bathroom was no larger than the one at the Writers’ Home; it contained an oval tiled tub with a rotatable shower head and a large towel on a stainless-steel rack. A mirror hung over a cracked blue porcelain sink. A worn rug was spread out in front of it. There was no lack of hot water, though.
He had agreed to her proposal because he needed time to think, but he knew he could not stay in the bathroom too long. With a few ideas, half-formed in the vapor of shower, he emerged wearing her scruffy flannel bathrobe, the frayed belt brushing against his bare legs.
She was waiting, sitting cross-legged on the bed, painting her toenails a bright vermilion. The window filtered the light onto the plain white coverlet. Then she thrust her legs out in front of her, flexed her toes luxuriantly, lifted one foot above the other, waggled the toes at him, and giggled.
“Ah,” she said, “much better.”
There was a small bikini-girl poster above the sofa, and underneath it was a line in bold characters: TIME IS MONEY! a new political slogan he had seen in Guangzhou.
“Take off your robe,” she said, putting a finishing touch on her toenails with a steady hand. She then capped the polish bottle tightly, and put it aside on the nightstand. To his
surprise, she lay down on her back, and waved her feet in the air as if doing synchronized swimming. Her red toenails arced in the air.
“Must I?”
“Must I help you?”
He was flabbergasted as she jumped up and helped him off with the bathrobe. Luckily, he had put his shorts back on. She guided him to the bed where he lay down, and then she turned him over. Lying on his stomach, he was very nervous as he became aware that she, too, had gotten onto the bed.
She put both her hands on a stainless-steel bar suspended from the ceiling. With the bar bearing the weight of her body like a gymnast, she started massaging his back with her toes.
It was a bizarre experience. The first two or three minutes, he was perspiring with trepidation. Any second, she could stamp down violently on his bare back, a complex of vertebrae, discs, ligaments, and nerves. But soon he started to have mixed feelings. Her bare toes and heels pressing upon him elicited sensations of ice and fire all over him. His pleasure was actually heightened by his trepidation.
She must have had some professional training. Her toes concentrated on his trouble spots, working kinks out of his back, and reducing the tension in his body. He didn’t feel so bad anymore. Not about the case, nor the budget, nor the politics involved.
“You make my feet warm.” She was finally finished, her face flushed with exertion, her brow beaded with sweat.
“Marvelous,” he said.
“It’s good exercise for me, too.”
“It’s the first time for me.”
“I know,” she said, her hand lightly touching the knot of her robe. “What about the full service now?”
That was something he could not do. A line he must not cross. This was the time to flash his I.D. Chief Inspector Chen should now take her to the police bureau and charge her with prostitution. But what about Professor Xie? He had given her his promise. News of what had become of Xie Rong would be too terrible a blow to the old intellectual who had already suffered a lot. The arrest would also incriminate his new friend Ouyang. Also, once she was taken into custody here, he was not sure if his local colleagues would help with his investigation. He was not sure that he could work out a deal for Xie in exchange for her information about Wu Xiaoming.
“You are sweating all over.” He sounded more like a client so that she would not grow suspicious. “Take a good shower yourself. I’ll stay here and close my eyes for five minutes.”
“Yes, there is nothing like taking a short nap,” she said. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”
The moment she disappeared, he took a mini-recorder out of his briefcase and put it under the pillow. He put his shirt back on and buttoned several buttons before he closed his eyes for just a minute. In spite of himself, he dozed off. When he was awakened by the slamming of the bathroom door, it took him a few seconds to realize where he was.
She stepped out of the bathroom, naked except for a large bath towel draped around her shoulders. Fine-limbed and thin, she looked more like a high-school girl waiting for a regular checkup—except for a broad patch of black hair spreading over the lower part of her abdomen. She examined herself in the mirror, the water beading on her skin under the fluorescent light, which turned her face opalescent. Then she caught him gazing at her in the mirror. Startled, she pulled the towel down to cover her hips, but then she shook her wet hair, and gave him a long, steady look.
She started slowly toward the bed. He smelled the soap on her skin, still wet from the shower. Clean, fresh. Her body glowed.
“You are special,” she said.
He was so acutely aware of her, it took all his willpower to stop her from touching him.
“Let’s talk,” he said.
“No,” she touched a finger to his mouth, “you don’t have to say anything.”
“We don’t know each other yet.”
“Haven’t we talked enough?” she said. “Unless you want to talk about money.”
“Well—”
“Mr. Ouyang has paid for a whole day’s service, and you’ve given me a handsome tip,” she said. “So you can have the whole day, and the night, too. You don’t have to worry about it. If you want to buy me a dinner afterward—”
“No.” He sat up resolutely. It was not just all the years studying the People’s Police Morals Manual that had made Chen immune to such provocation. “I want to talk to you about something else.”
“What?”
“I’m a cop.” He produced his official I.D. “I’m here to ask you some questions.”
“You S.O.B!” She put one hand over her breasts and the other over her pubic hair.
It struck him as an absurd attempt at modesty, as if his being a cop had suddenly changed her identity, too.
“You won’t get into trouble if you cooperate with me,” he said. “I give you my word.”
“Then why didn’t you say so from start?”
“When I came to you, I was not prepared to see you like this. Ouyang had just told me that you were the one I’ve been looking for. I was surprised, and you did not give me a chance to say anything.” He handed the bathrobe over to her. “Put it on before you get cold.”
“I don’t trust you,” she said, taking the bathrobe. “Why should I cooperate with you?”
“I can have you arrested,” he said, taking out the recorder from under the pillow. “Once you are put in jail, you’ll have to talk anyway, but that’s not what I want to do.”
“What a treacherous sneak!”
“I’m a police officer.”
“So why don’t you go ahead and put me there?”
“Ouyang is my friend. Besides—”
“Why did you lie to Ouyang about being a poet?”
“No, I didn’t. I am a poet.”
It took him some time to ferret out his Writers’ Association membership card from his wallet.
“Then what the hell do you want with me?”
“Just a few questions.”
“You are so horrible.” She broke down, sobbing with fear and humiliation. “When I was ready—”
He had attained authority over her with his surprise revelation of his official identity. But they were still involved in a highly dramatic scene. He, in his half-buttoned shirt and underpants; she, in a bathrobe. The knowledge of her nakedness under the robe, soft and bulging in the right places, was disturbing. He poured her a cup of tea to calm them both.
Sipping at the tea, her painted toes like fallen petals on the carpet, she regained some control.
The touch of her toes was still fresh in his memory.
“Let’s go to a restaurant,” he suggested. “I’m hungry.”
“What?”
“You mentioned dinner afterwards.”
“Why? More of your dirty tricks?”
“No. I Just want to buy you a meal. What about the White Swan Hotel? It is quiet there, Ouyang’s told me. As for your time—”
“Don’t worry about that. Ouyang has paid for the whole day.”
“So the least I can do is pay for the lunch.”
He had saved enough to be able to afford this gesture, thanks to Ouyang, who had bought him so many morning teas and dinners.
“Why can’t we stay here?”
“Listen, I’m a cop,” he said, “but I’m a man too. If I stay here with you, just the two of us, I won’t be able to help feeling distracted.”
“So I’m not repulsive to you?”
“We need to have a good talk.”
“Fine, if that’s what you want.”
She got up and went into the bathroom without closing the door. Her robe fell to the floor in a heap around her feet, her bare breasts and hips were vivid in the mirror. He turned to the window.
When she came back, she had put on a white summer dress and slung a small purse over her shoulder. She did not wear a bra, so her nipples were almost imprinted on the dress. He considered asking her to put on something else, but he held the door open for her.
On the street, he
noticed she kept looking back over her shoulder, as if anxious to make sure there was no one following them. There was actually a man walking behind them at a distance, but Chief Inspector Chen did not see why they would be followed.
The White Swan Hotel was a new building on the southeastern coast of Shamian Island. It was an immense white tower, like a transplant from Hong Kong across the water. There was a dazzling waterfall in the lobby. Several Western-style restaurants were located in the eastern wing of the building, and the Chinese restaurant was tucked behind the waterfall. There was a slender hostess standing at its entrance, smiling.
He was not going to indulge himself, but he felt obliged to spend some money. He did not like the idea of having Ouyang pay for everything, even for Xie Rong’s “service.” And he had to admit the so-called foot massage had been an exciting experience,.
They selected a private room—the Sampan Chamber. It proved to be a cozy room shaped like the cabin of a sampan on the Pearl River and decorated like one, too. The table and chairs were made of cedar—rough, unpolished, like those he’d seen in early black-and-white movies. The soft scarlet carpet on the floor was the only difference, but it was a necessary one, to give the customer a feeling of luxury. They could talk here without fear of being overheard.
A young waitress came in. She was wearing an indigo blue homespun top and a miniskirt, barefoot, with silver bangles jingling around her ankles, exactly like a fishing girl in the southern provinces—except for the menu in her hand.
He turned the menu over to Xie. She surprised him by choosing several inexpensive dishes, and shaking her head at one of the chef’s specials—fish-fragrance-sauced pigeon—recommended by the waitress.
“No, it’s too expensive.”
“Anything to drink?”
“Just a cup of water for me.”
“Well, we’ll have two iced beers then.”
“You shouldn’t. They charge three or four times more than they should for drinks,” she added after the waitress had left, almost like a virtuous wife who wanted to save every penny. Good. Chief Inspector Chen was starting to worry about the expense.
“I thought you’d take me to the police station,” she said.